I’m going to start this post with a spoiler: I don’t actually know the answer to this one. But I wanted to tell you a story about my big pattern release of 2025.

In about August of 2025, I decided to design a big pattern for the holiday season. I design a lot of ornaments, but I thought it would be fun to do something a little more and a little bigger. I’ve always loved Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. I’ve listened to the music probably hundreds of times and I’ve seen a handful of performances of the ballet. So I decided to do a nutcracker. Nutcrackers are classic and fun. I made this one the size to go on a mantle piece or be part of table decor. It’s a little larger than an ornament. It’s all made from relatively easy to source materials: wool felt, thread, sequins, a popsicle stick. I even put together a sequin kit so you could just buy exactly what you need to make the pattern.

I wrote a little in this post about designing the nutcracker. I decided to make a dog version, because I love anything to do with dogs. Then I created a classic nutcracker face and a cat version that could be swapped out. The body pieces stayed the same and you could make any of the versions you liked; you can see them all in the photo above. So I called it the Nutcracker Trio Pattern.

One of the things I try to do a lot in my practice is to find ways to re-use work. For this project that meant I was going to release this pattern in three ways: as a Zoom class, as a pre-recorded video class and as a .pdf pattern. I could develop all of those at the same time, because so many parts overlapped. The print version of the pattern is about 24 pages long, all illustrated with step-by-step photos. It’s practically a book.

I made samples. I photographed. I teased “making of” and “coming soon” photos and videos on Instagram and Facebook. I took the samples with me to every in-person class and event I did in October and November.

I did a lot of research about best practices for holiday pattern releases. I took registrations for the Zoom class and online class starting in early fall so that people could get theirs finished by Thanksgiving if they were working along in class. I released the pdf pattern on Etsy on October 1.

Then… crickets.

To be fair, I taught the Zoom version of the class to a group of regular class participants. We have done some kind of a holiday ornament pattern together every year for about 4-5 years now so they were ready to sign up as soon as I had it ready. We had a lot of fun in class and everyone made gorgeous custom versions as gifts for all kinds of family members. We even had ones made to look like the family dogs. An absolute joy.

But I didn’t sell a single pattern. Or have a single class registration for the online version. None.

In October, I tried not to get discouraged. It was early. People weren’t thinking about holiday decor yet. I made some promo videos with some dry ice that were Halloween themed. I did a Swifty Showgirl version. I posted clips from videos and talked about the embroidery stitches. I wrote a blog post and wrote about it in my newsletter.

November and still nothing.

  • I took some new photos and swapped them around in my Etsy listing.
  • I added photos of nutcrackers made by students to my class page and got some great quotes.
  • I added finished versions to my Captain Labradork shop thinking maybe people wanted to buy them and not make them. (None sold.)
  • I brought finished ones to sell at in-person craft shows and made a QR code with links to the class and the pattern. (None sold.)
  • I expanded the sequins kit I had for sale to include some of the other optional hardware like popsicle sticks to the kit.
  • I made a new resources sheet that matched the pattern to 4 different pre-set Benzie Design felt color palettes that would work amazingly for this pattern, so you could buy essentially a kit of felt ready to go.
  • I ran a sale for furloughed government employees.
  • I ran an ad in a holiday gift guide for the Craft Industry Alliance.
  • I did market research and poured over similar listings on Etsy looking for comparable patterns/cost/complexity. (Mine was right in line with those.)
  • I made SO many samples to use in photos and promos.

Etsy ran a whole video campaign about “Nutcracker Core” being a huge holiday trend. I’ve sold on Etsy for 20 years and I sell patterns like this regularly, so I know I had everything set up right and early enough for the algorithm to find it.

But sadly, this pattern turned into the biggest flop of my entire design career so far.

I don’t know why it flopped and that’s probably the most frustrating thing about being a designer. People went crazy for these when I had them at in-person events. Everyone said “you should sell these in the gift shop at —” or “these are going to be so popular” or “I would totally take this class”. They asked me if there would be kits available. They liked the social media posts. All signs pointed to it being a popular pattern/class.

I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve talked to friends in the same sector/industry, other makers, students and teaching colleagues. I don’t know where it missed the mark, but a few ideas that floated to the top:

  • Maybe it looked to hard or too complicated? It seemed like an advanced project and scared off beginners?
  • Maybe it looked like it would take too much time? People were looking for quick and easy? (I did sell a lot of simpler patterns on Etsy in the same time frame, especially sheep.)
  • Maybe the algorithms were just putting my content in a deep dark hole where no one was seeing it?
  • Maybe I didn’t promote it enough? Or promoted it with the wrong message?
  • Maybe the economy just held people back from buying? Maybe it was too expensive?
  • Maybe it’s really terrible and I just can’t see it?

I haven’t decided yet if I am going to retire the pattern on Etsy and relaunch it next holiday season or leave it up and see what happens. Maybe it needs to have fresh eyes look at it. I need to think about it some more.

As I am wrapping up 2025 and looking at my spreadsheet of projects and goals for the year, I made a choice to invest a lot of time and resources into this design and it definitely didn’t work the way I had hoped. That part of my goals chart are not going to be filled in for sure and yet I feel like I still did everything “right”. And who wants to post a rosy “I’ve met all my goals for the year!” post (like I’ve been seeing all around) when you feel like you totally didn’t.

And that’s the reason I decided to write this post, because I KNOW that I am not the only one this has happened to. It’s easy to get discouraged when you put things out there and so I wanted to share this story because I know it helps to know you aren’t the only one.